Japan minimalist designer Dai Sato: "The function of design is to make people happy"

Reference News Network reported on July 30 that the website of Spain's "El País" recently reported that Japan's minimalist designer Dai Sato, the full text is excerpted as follows:

Daishi Sato, founder of Nendo Architecture and Design Studio, known as "the model of minimalist design in Japan", said that he has two mentors: Issey Miyake and Doraemon. The former is a fashion designer who combined tradition and technology to revolutionize the textile industry in the 20th century, while the latter is a robot cat whose manga adventures have been with Japan's childhood for 50 years.

From Issey Miyake (1938-2022), he received a defining commission in his career – a "cabbage" chair, while learning how to find abundance in scarcity and elegance in simplicity.

Creation has an entertaining spirit

Born in Toronto in 1977, Dai Sato read Doraemon stories as a child, which fostered his interest in creating inventions and began to pay attention to the trivial details of everyday life. "When I came to Japan, I was 10 years old and I was amazed by the world of Doraemon," he said. I'm very excited because for me, it's like coming to the future. "Doraemon was my teacher because I studied architecture and no one taught me how to design products," Sato said. He was referring to the unusual gadgets used by this robot cat from the 22nd century. To help Doraemon's owner, Nobita Nobi, a kind-natured but clumsy boy with poor grades, Doraemon pulls out many gadgets from his pocket. Sato emphasized that these inventions do not require specifications. "Even Nobita can use them," he said. While they solve the problem, they are not perfect. This creates drama, tells a story, and adds spice to life. ”

"Nendo" in Japanese means: clay model. Sato chose the name when he founded his studio in 2002 because it conveyed the spirit of entertainment that dominates all of his creations.

His first commissioned project was to decorate a French restaurant opened by a childhood friend in a hidden corner of Tokyo, and it was also his first "Doraemon" moment. In addition to being on a tight budget, the two-storey building looks out of place in an urban setting, completely devoid of the Parisian glamour that customers crave. As if possessing the power of a robot cat, the designer procured a 300-meter-long canvas that enveloped the entire building, including the walls, tables and chairs. He placed several spotlights in the room, turning the room into a giant warm light box that reflected on the neighboring river as night fell. This ingenious solution has been reported by many media outlets, and of course the delicious cuisine of this restaurant called Canvas. This also attracted an important diner, the visionary haute couture designer Issey Miyake.

"Storytelling is more important than style"

Issey Miyake asked him to design a chair using the paper used to make his famous clothing line, "Lifetime Pleats." Faithful to the concept of pleats, Sato cut vertically in the top half of the roll and then unfold the layers of paper, like the leaves of an ear of corn, to form a fluffy base. He showed the piece to Issey Miyake and said that it was still under development, but the fashion maestro was fascinated by it and told him not to touch it again, so it would be good.

Sato recalls, "All of a sudden, I felt a great freedom in design. I realized that there is no single goal, and it is up to me whether the design is completed or not. "A few years ago, Sato, who had just completed his PhD at Waseda University, had already found his way to minimalism when he participated in the Salone del Mobile in Milan. He admits that when he saw the work of Western designers, he was intimidated by the exaggerated shapes and colors. "I realized that I would never be able to compete with them," he said. Since I can't shout, I think it's better to tell some small stories in a low voice. I chose minimalism. ”

He argues that Japan's preference for minimalism stems from its cultural roots. "It's how we feel and it's the way we look at things," he said. Minimalism is rooted in our culture, our way of life, our literature, our art, and even our diet. ”

While his minimalism is reflected in his pure lines and penchant for black and white, storytelling is more important than style when it comes to creating. "What really inspires me, and what I want to interpret and convey, is the story behind an object," he says. When sporting goods manufacturer Molten asked Sato to design a soccer ball, Sato laughed and admitted that he didn't know anything about the sport and that he didn't want to get inspiration from Google searches or soccer games. He was inspired by the story that children around the world can't afford to buy a ball, and even if they do, there's no way to restore it when it's broken. So he designed a sphere made from 54 pieces of recyclable polypropylene that was inexpensive, easy to transport and maintain. The balls can be transported in a flat envelope and are very similar to the traditional bamboo balls used in some Asian countries.

The mark left by Japan manga in other works is increasingly visible in non-commercial projects in galleries and museums around the world. For the Friedman · Bunda Gallery in New York, he designed 50 comic book chairs, a series of steel chairs based on visual elements from the comics to express movement, emotion or sound effects. At the International Exhibition of Home Decoration Arts in Paris, France, he paid homage to onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia is a rich linguistic element in Japan manga, but it is often lost in translation. He named a series of chocolates after Japanese onomatopoeia that describes the texture of chocolate, such as "crunchy" (goro-goro) or "sticky" (sube-sube).

Sato's accolades include being named one of the 100 Most Admired Japan United States of 2002 by Newsweek and receiving the Designer of the Year award from professional publications such as Home Décor magazine, Elle Decor. The article on the Design Encyclopedia website about Nendo calls it "an outstanding representative of minimalist design in Japan." Some of his most iconic works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

He doesn't seem to be threatened by the AI and jokes that maybe the next interview can be answered by a robot. He predicts with a little seriousness that AI will be well suited to designing mass-market products because of its ability to process data, "but AI can't create something that is wrong." Just like Doraemon, mistakes can be beautiful. The beauty of design lies in the fact that in the end everything will be destroyed. All our emotions, whether laughing, crying or angry, have to do with the fact that we will eventually die". At the end of the interview, he returned to a cheerful tone and quoted a maxim from his mentor Issey Miyake when asked how to define the difference between art and design: "Art can convey sadness." The function of the design is to make people happy. (Compiled by Liu Lifei)